Thread:JayAaerow/@comment-134861-20180906125341/@comment-134861-20180906185806

So, here's what I'm talking about: Look at Nevan.

It treats "life-draining" as a concrete, specific ability, phrasing it as if it's attribute. Now, the DMC series has attributes in the form of elemental damage, but there's no real indication that "life-draining" is this monolithic concept, and phrasing it in the format of a checklist implies that it does.

Same with "electrokinesis" -- "electrokinesis" is not a concept that's indicated to exist in the DMC universe. Having supernatural power over lightning is, definitely, but it's not this clinical, ESP-related thing.

She also doesn't summon bats -- she controls them, and lives in a cave.

She's also not teleporting in a puff of smoke -- she's fading into shadow/darkness, and you can watch the shadows move elsewhere.

It also lists "natural seductress" as one of her "abilities" (which, not really clearly distinguishing "powers" from "abilities") which is both more of a personality trait, and...kind of feels sexist to list as an "ability".

Then, for Vergil, the page lists "superhuman strength" -- but how is it quantifying that? What does that actually mean beyond "he's really strong"? Is there a set amount of psi or kW he can output? Is there anything in the fiction that actually states that his physical strength is unheard of among humans? And why "superhuman" instead of "demonic"?

(Hell, considering how there's almost no humans actually interacted with in the game proper, is it even appropriate to be comparing Vergil to humans instead of humans to him? At the very least, wouldn't it make more sense to compare Vergil's strength to the demons we actually see him interact with?)

Speed and agility are not very distinguished.

Durability and endurance is not very distinguished, and also seems false -- he definitely does show damage during DMC3, and then we also see boss battles like with the 100% non-magical Lady that show her able to at least partially operate on a comparable level to the brothers. Obviously they're stronger, but she's not completely useless.

Healing Factor also seems to be claiming a bit much -- Lady takes strikes from Rebellion too and isn't vivisected. And where's the claim that it's even a healing factor, rather than popping some vital stars or something similar? Or that "when it has been removed from his body" is the key?

Similar with "Demonic Energy Manipulation" -- the canon doesn't seem to tie these various instances together as some larger "skill". It's OR for us to say "his use of an energy orb is a manifestation of the same power that lets him do the summoned swords".

Then, we see another really unclear split between powers and abilities, and "summoned swords" listed as an ability rather than in arsenal.

"real-life sword style known as iaijutsu" is kind of breathless, and should be sourced. Same with "grasping the fundamentals of any weapon". He really only uses Devil Arms -- wouldn't it make more sense that, as a demon, it's less of a skill with weapons and more at bending the demon's soul to his will?

And just, across the board, a lot of this reads as if it's very much making extrapolations from things we see in cutscenes, rather than just reporting what we see in the cutscenes. Finally, the use of caps for all these indicate that these are official, canonical terms, which they very much are not.

This is a system that is really only applicable in something like Marvel, MHA, Dragonball, or Jojo, where this is character X, and this is the exact rules of what they can do, and this is how that ranks on a universal scale. It could even kind of work in something like Bleach or Naruto, since those are still pretty specific systems. It's not really appropriate for settings that are less codified. Basically, if the system is set up so that Kirby/Rogue/Sasuke/All-for-One/Rockman/Sefirotmon/Quistis can't use their special ability to replicate what you're doing, then it's not really appropriate for this kind of bulleted list -- it needs a more holistic, less-quantized approach.

There is a certain amount of power-copying in DMC, in the form of channeling a Devil Arm or the Quicksilver/Doppelganger/Devil Bringer-item abilities. Those are treated as discrete, quantized packages, rather than just "this is what it means to be a demon or son of sparda". But the way things are being listed on these pages, the names given to them, the assumptions of how they work, the assumptions of how they are distinguished from the other abilities on that list -- those are arbitrary distinctions from outside the canon.

It's still very possible to go over a character's more unique attributes in a more holistic, and I've got to say, encyclopedic way than a Marvel-style checklist: see https://www.khwiki.com/Sora#Abilities